In a Square Triangle

By S. Aminah Nialiah

Mariea's dreams are no longer deferred. Mariea has come a long way away from the physical, verbal, and mental abuses that she had gone through. She had gotten to a place where she can now tell others since no one had to consider caring about her situation. From a meager beginning to a personal awareness of her own self-worth and worthiness, she is at a place where she wants to be. She can tell some of the stories that brought her there. So she takes you there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644628089

Book preview

Volume 1

Foreword

To begin, I want to say, Mariea could not be just plain or ordinary. There was no way she was living between two very different worlds. She actually lived between heaven and hell.

Independently, she survived. She went to work at age twelve, while perpetrating a thirteen-year-old. She had the paperwork to prove it. She worked on tobacco beside all those grown women. She pulled her own weight. She got up at 4:00 a.m. to catch the bus. She took a can of tuna fish and made six sandwiches for her daily meals. There was a bag of apples for her daily desserts along with penny candies. They were mostly Bit-O-Honey candies. She drank fountain water to fill in the gaps. She slept going to and coming from work on the bus. She bathed and ate dinner. She then did her chores and she went to bed when the sun went down. Dead tired, she set her alarm.

She took cooking and sewing from the fourth grade through high school. She acquired a Singer sewing machine from a friend’s mother who no longer needed it. So what clothing her biological dad didn’t buy for her, she made for herself.

She compensated very well, for her family’s shortcomings. No one cleaned, cooked except (her mother), sewed for her, or paid her way. Yet she thrived, even survived on an upper level. She was short, dark-skinned, and nappy-headed. Yet she thought, she was just a cut above.

For deep down inside, she knew she was not average, but this was what she was supposed to do. She was of the age to help her family where it was needed.

Survival from an early age in life on a certain level was absolutely a necessity. This was to get her to wherever this life would take her.

All that was because being where she was just would not do. So she fought to overcome here circumstances. Therefore, she never wanted to settle for mediocre.

She saw the rainbows with all the colors, but getting to her pots of gold, through the muck and mess, is where the strength of excellence came in and purpose was achieved for her through God’s perfect will for her life.

Introduction

In my push for excellence, my everyday life was actually between heaven and hell.

Mariea was one of ten children, the oldest. There were four different sets of families.

Her father’s children consisted of, two girls, two boys and her. There was another sister and brother from her father, separate from his household. She had her mother’s children, one girl, two boys, and her, one of which died at age three. There were two adopted brothers raised in her mother’s house as well. There were, in spite of all odds, no circumstances insurmountable enough to keep their lives from intertwining. She had a tough job being a girl.

She had to set an example for the boys. This was not so tough when it came to the girls. However, supervision on a daily basis in the hearts of the ghettos of Connecticut and New York, with the toughest of the tough, made her always aware of her surroundings.

Something on that vein, she gave to them all.

However, they all realized their scars from the experiences of their daily lives.

S. Aminiah Nialiah, also known as Saundra Foster

Faithful one who is trustworthy

Chapter 1

Back in the 1800s, there was a freed African who went by the name of Black Jack. He jumped the broom with a Cherokee bride/wife. The two of them had several sons and daughters together. Those two were Mariea’s great-grandparents.

One of his sons was named Frank, born in February, 1890. Frank married Olivia. Those were Mariea’s grandparents. They had thirteen children (eight sons and five daughters). Frank worked and retired from the railroad in the Southern Hills of Georgia.

Picture that.

So they had courage, energies, ambition, and a lot of love. It had to be love with thirteen children. They decided to migrate up North with all thirteen of them.

Now, Mariea’s grandparents were churchgoing people. They were God-fearing people. They were kind people who found their way up north from the deep Down South.

Mariea’s grandparents migrated up north from those southern hills of Georgia. Frank’s sons went first. A few of them went at a time. With so much courage, her uncles went to Connecticut. One stopped and stayed in New York. He was different. I don’t know what he did, but it wasn’t picking fruit or tobacco like the others. The others went to Connecticut and farther North to New Hampshire. They all worked, tobacco or at gardener’s nursery, picking fruit. They were saving all their monies except for needed essentials. They had to make the way to go back to get their father. After saving even more money, they went back Down South. This time, it was to retrieve her grandma and their sisters. When the aunties arrived, they worked on tobacco or cleaned others houses.

All but one came, who at that time was on the chain gang because she had a child by the man she worked for. The wife of that man pressed charges.

She came later and opened up a restaurant/bar and did very well.

They all found living up north was far different from living in the South.

Yet they all thrived, found mates, and made families.

This family was close to one another. They always looked out for one another. Their mother or father never wanted for anything.

Though my grandfather did something that puzzled me. He would go to West Hartford and solicit by going door to door telling people about God. Now I guess you would associate him with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but at that time, Mariea could not understand it. She really couldn’t understand why people would give him money.

He was a minister, Revered Frank. He saved enough money to open up a couple of storefront churches. He ended up owning Zion Apostolic Church of God. He preached the word of God in his church and at home.

We had other followers of God in our family.

I guess, we all believed. Yet most of us are worldly.

Chapter 2

Mariea’s granddad had a temper, but we never took that serious. What we did take serious was his mean thump on your head. He didn’t need a belt to reprimand you.

He would tell her stories of the Railroad, the South, and Black Jack the African who was his father. He told her all about her great-granddad. He told her about his wife the Cherokee Indian. She was my great-grandma. Oh, how I loved to sit at his feet and listen to him talk about those times and the many places. He told real life stories about, the cotton picking in the South, the chain-gang, the dignity and morals of a family’s code.

He could cook as well. He taught her how to boil hamburgers. He also made apple turnovers from scratch which he taught me to do.

Now there was a milk machine on the complex where they lived. He would send her to the machine with a quarter for milk and a nickel for her. She loved to eat, but she never liked milk not even as a baby. Yet she was made by him to drink a glass of milk before her meals.

Oh, how I love Jesus, oh how I love Jesus, because he first loved me.

Mariea’s grandmother was the sweetest, soft-spoken woman on earth. She was full of wisdom and kind words.

She loved to go fishing. Mariea and her grandma would dig worms on Friday. So most Saturday mornings, they would be brought by one or another of her uncles to a fish bank. Mariea learned to bait her own hook in time and she caught many fish. They would come home to her grandparents’ house to clean and fry fish.

She always cooked hot breakfast on Sundays. She would cook biscuits, grits, sausage, or bacon or fatback, all before they went off to church. They would eat their breakfast and arrive at church on time.

She made pear and grape preserves from scratch and Mariea would help. She would store some preserves for the winter and give family members the others. She also taught Mariea how to prepare hog’s head cheese. She showed her how to cook the parts, grind them up, and chill it until it molded.

Her grandmother washed clothing by hand until one of her sons delivered her a wringer-type washing machine. Her clothing that was hung on the line was so very white. It would make you wonder how she did it.

Mariea learned much about cooking and cleaning from her grandma. Mariea had the pleasure of spending part of her life with these two people. She loved those two people. They were good to her.

They were around long enough to help strengthen those of us that they left behind much too soon.

Chapter 3

Mariea’s mom was the youngest of the five daughters. She had two brothers younger than she.

Mariea’s mom, Lillie, dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade. This was after she had sewn a white classmate’s finger with her sewing machine. This happened in her sewing class. That girl had called her out of her name.

Lillie got pregnant by her first love shortly after that.

She fell in love with Cal. He had been left in a field, by his mother. This was down in Florida. He was found by one of his uncles. He was brought from Southern Florida to Connecticut. He lived in Hartford with his grandmother who raised him. He went to Trinity College.

Shortly afterward, Lillie got pregnant. He was then forced to join the Air Force by his grandmother.

That appeared to be his penalty for committing that crime.

Just about the same time all this was happening, he learned that his dad whom he had never known, he learned that he had been shot down. This was in those same streets of Hartford, Connecticut, that he was now leaving to go to the Air Force.

This was Mariea’s granddad, on her father’s side of the family. He was shot in the back in the streets of Connecticut by a police officer.

He was just another police officer who got no time for the shooting her granddad in the back and killing him.

Chapter 4

Lillie was sent from Connecticut to live in New York. One of her brothers and a sister lived there now. This was where she was to give birth.

Now, I don’t know that Mariea ever really thought that she aspired to be an actress. Yet she has been a performer for sixty, yes sixty, some odd years. No, I’m not going tell you sixty what, but she was born by the river. No, sir. No, sir. Picture this—Harlem, New York, in August 1950, hot bright lights, not a quiet night. There was stars, the heavens, the ambulance, and Sydenham Hospital. My mom and me. I was born there in Harlem in 1950. Me. Mariea.

That didn’t last too long though. My grandparents thought we should not live in Harlem. So Hartford, Connecticut, here we come.

Her stay in New York at that time was brief because Lillie was getting wild in the streets of New York. Sometimes while going with her brother Frank Jr. to card games, she would have his back by carrying a gun. She was very familiar with the streets of New York night clubs and otherwise.

The word got back to her parents in Connecticut.

Lillie’s dad Frank went to New York, and he brought the mother and daughter back to Connecticut. There was no need for discussion about the matter. He was the boss.

Mariea was now to grow up in Connecticut.

Times were hard for her in Hartford.

Chapter 5

So love brought Mariea to Hartford, Connecticut, and love sustained her through those early years of which she doesn’t remember the first one or two of. But she started using her mind and her limbs at the age of three.

I said three, huh?

Now, how do I know that? You know how we carry stories down from the past? So I heard it over and over again how I showed my Uncle Frank how to get from my house to my grandmas. He was named Frank like my granddad. So I should say Frank Jr. They told how I look at him as he drove us in his car. We went from my mother’s house down those streets of Hartford, to my grandma’s house. I told him where to turn because I knew the way at three. I knew because I had walked it day in and day out with my mom. Bits and pieces of my mind set into place between ages four and seven.

I must understand by now that I live between heaven and hell.

It was either that fiery, inferno or that real very peaceful place.

I am five and it was first day of school, kindergarten. I remember that so well because my mom only walked with me on some days. I didn’t think she should stop walking me to school.

I know, times then were not like they are now. So it was only five blocks straight with no main street to cross and no crossing guards. I thought it was far and I was scared.

This was the place where the library was on the corner that I needed to turn at to get to my house.

It was only my mom and me for a long time. Then I remember several men in our lives. They had cars and beer. I liked Ballantine beer with the three rings that looked like a pretzel in my mind. Yuck, good. I was permitted to drink some.

I loved my mom. She was good to me as well.

Chapter 6

I realized by the age of seven that a lot of things were starting to happen to me in my life.

My grandparents lived in a project called Nelton Court. This housing project was a different kind of project. There were white people there. Mariea had many white friends. One in particular named June.

Her grandparents had the first television in the neighborhood. They liked to watch baseball, the Yankees, soap operas, and Joe Frazier in his Friday night fights.

Mariea had a pair of roller skates at their house. She tore them up skating all the time. She knew not to ask for another pair. So she took the wheels off and put them on a piece of wood panel and she made a skateboard. She had seen one of her male cousins do this. She took the skateboard out one day when she was visiting her grandparents’ house. She rode down the hill with it on Nelson Street. She rode right into Main Street traffic. Her skateboard was taken away from her for good.

My granddad chewed tobacco. One particular day, I found myself trudging up Nelson Street to the third store of the day. I was looking for Apple Tobacco with my nickel for pumpkin seeds.

When I finally reached the corner of Clark Street, I just ran across the street. I dropped my nickel in the middle of the street. I knew because I could see it. I also could see the car coming as I ran back to get it. Yet something in my mind told me, It will stop. But the car didn’t stop for me. It hit me. I laid on the ground in the street only half knowing what was going on. I knew that I